Month: February 2020

The Hawthorne Works Museum is located in Morton College at 3801 S. Central Ave. in Cicero Illinois. The museum tells the story of the Hawthorne Works factory. It showcases the Western Electric telephones and other communications products manufactured there over the years. It also delves into local history and the immigrant workforce that was so important to this plant

The Hawthorne Works was a large factory complex of the Western Electric Company. It was named after the original name of the town, Hawthorne. It operated from 1905 through 1983. At its’ height it employed as many as 45,000 people.

The facility is also know for the industrial studies held there in the 1920s; the most famous of which was called The Hawthorne effect. Unfortunately, the Hawthorne Works faced tragedy when 220 employees were killed in the Eastland Disaster in 1915. They were mostly Czech immigrants and were going to a company picnic event.

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The Jane Adams Hull House Museum is located at 800 South Halsted Street in Chicago. Hull House was a settlement house that was co-founded by Jane Adams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. It was named after the first/original owner Charles Jerald Hull. Hull House served recently arrived European immigrants on the West side of Chicago. Hull House had grown to 13 building by 1911, and in 1912 the Hull House complex was completed with the Bowen Country Club. By 1920 there were almost 500 similar settlement houses in the U.S. Hull House was a pioneer in this movement. In the mid 1960s most of the Hull House buildings were demolished to build the UIC campus. On June 12, 1974 the surviving Hull mansion was designated a Chicago Landmark. It is also a designated National Historic Landmark and is on the register of U.S. Historic places. The Hull House Association continued to provide social services in multiple locations throughout Chicago but ceased operations in January 2012. The Hull mansion and a related dining hall remain open as a museum.